as the world greets twenty thirteen we show you the most spectacular celebrations and look ahead to the potential challenges that face this. field of conflict protests. and hear from our correspondents about how it could have been different. fiscal cliff last minute deal looks set to. the time being at least.

you're watching. it. well the new year's global race is wrapping up so that such a quick look at some of the most spectacular celebrations that have been held so far new zealand was among the first to twenty thirty crowds at the harbor in oakland to enjoy the display of the city's sky tower raised two million people turned out of a key celebration in australia sydney's skyline erupted with a nonstandard jaw dropping fireworks at midnight a bridge. night later moved on to asia with hong kong which really built up the tension of the countdown then lit up the sky from both land and sea europe has also welcome the new year with a major fireworks display at the brandenburg gate in berlin becoming one of the world's largest open air parties and the dazzling display also splashed skies above

the london eye in the u.k. capital and across the atlantic over a million spectators descend york's times celebrate the event with the additional troops. in russia officially kicked off when the clock on tower in moscow rang out twelve times square was filled with crowds as far works that the skies above the kremlin the russians it's been a year of major political challenges in the rise of public opinion. has often distracted russia to save my colleagues kevin owen and in eastern our way asked how he sees things panning out. what is the future of russia's political opposition as you see the new compared to two thousand and twelve i would say it's kind of bleak but not hopeless ok we didn't come up with any new ideas new organization new faces and if pussy riot is that we are of the opposition or it's pretty dreadful

situation for the russian people and political development in general here in this political change in this country in a positive change who does make up the opposition as we head into you. it's a very interesting question because i have gone to most of the major demonstrations and there were people there of goodwill in my opinion but then there were fascists there ok who were communists there and they were these are people they're ok and it's your right to demonstrate i actually like the idea but they didn't accomplish anything that i could see they have no organization no unifying ideas except for i don't like but a mere putin which is not a very it's not a political agenda there were a few protests which i was out as well where it did seem like that was the method if you wanted to gain traction on this opposition movement do you see people coming out and take the train lost a lot of its novelty effect right now ok because political change takes years in years in years that have to be local this is what happens in political changes with

countries that were what they were carrying at one time it takes a long time to get people involved in the process and that is happening very very strongly there's some people that want to really fast and they don't want to do it through elections they want power because they want power because they believe they deserve it and what about the fact that we're not going to see any presidential elections of course that all led up to being elected a third term this protest and now they're kind of down oh i would say to people i mean if you want to continue to protest in but you know join a political party there are forty four of them now you have a choice ok get involved see one of the things i saw with a lot of the protesters is that they want someone else to do all the hard work ok they want to go out and wave a flag and say give out a slogan they don't want to do the hard nitty gritty work of political change and that's what they need to do and i would be looking at the next parliamentary election for change we'll know we certainly will be going to be easy to come up as one of the great programs in store we wish you all the very best to cross talk of the new year on out thank you. well twenty thirteen will be

a year of change for iran as the current president steps down with no clear successor in sight the coming election takes off iran's nuclear ambitions that's later in the program. also on the way the last two years have seen a fierce struggle and tragedy in syria many say twenty will fail to bring on the way to peace to the world and. america is breathing a sigh of relief going into the new year as lawmakers in washington strike a temporary deal on the edge of the fiscal cliff the senate has already agreed to hold the proposed tax hike which is set to affect virtually every u.s. worker but it's not all good news the deal has still to go before the house of representatives later in the day and we thrashed out fully in a few months time. nobody is talking about the true issue to the fact that the

country and the western world is bankrupt basically this is a classic case of kicking the can down the road they didn't want to address it before the election so they said we'll extend the debt and we'll just wait till next year and they thought it would go up quite a bit further but the deficit ran up so much faster than anticipated we'll take care of it tomorrow and that's all the politicians in the us are anywhere too they're not proactive they're not problem solvers they don't care about you and all they care about is their own little power and you know let the rest of the world be damned the average american doesn't understand why his country by the world economy is going down the drain all they know is class warfare which is what the administration wants that the banks are getting rich and they're getting poorer they don't understand why any of this is happening so for the average american they're going to pay some more taxes but the average americans in fear of losing

his job and losing everything that he's worked this whole life for and he doesn't have a clue why. the fiscal cliff is just more theater bankers and politicians trying to distract people from the underlying root. that is a bunch of bankers who are manipulating the system day in and day destroying the economy the fiscal cliff is just more drama more theater it doesn't really focus on the true underlying problem that we're going to see more of this going forward in two thousand and thirteen. tension from the mob with their pitch forks and their torches were coming after these people they want to just delay that day of reckoning for many months if they can but that day of reckoning the twenty third it's comic. max keiser that was not too happy about it the e.u.

is also celebrating yet with all of. you and hear what the coming. to america's main political event the presidential election it was a tight race with runners neck and neck until barack obama convincingly beat his republican rival mitt romney well that competition overshadowed some third party candidates will have to struggle to get their voices heard what is going to. go to the white house. there were cheers of relief here when he won i would say because the alternative was thought to be so much worse many voted out of fear that romney could win for them he was another george w. bush so whether americans have fallen out of love with obama the two thousand and eight euphoria was gone that's for sure back then there were these crowds you know in the streets all across the country shedding tears of joy so bad in their view

where the eight years of bush presidency obama was good as the savior and then he went to save the banks save the auto industry something he took a special pride in during the election campaign but across the country millions of people remained out of work and are still out of work so this time president obama ran under the banner it could have been so much worse as you imagine it was not a banner for national euphoria it was more like you have no choice but to choose me kind of better something that shocked me while i was covering the election here it was it was the second debate between obama and romney i'm sure you remember you remember that at the presidential nominee from the green party jule styne was arrested right outside the venue where the debate was taking place she was protesting for exclusion from the debate and nobody like no news channel cured mentioned her arrest none and i was switching channels for hours to see if anything

was said about that and it was nothing i can imagine what the reaction would be here in the states if a presidential candidate in some other big country was arrested in the media there wouldn't even mention it but apparently it happens in the u.s. no big deal president candidates get arrested all the time right well there was some irony and yes anyway during the election campaign the mainstream media has been focused on nothing else and no one else with these two candidates and we are t.v. as you remember of course saw the is saw an opportunity there to show what others don't and we've posted the debate. there was one event that shook the u.s. so badly it convinced president obama to put the country's treasured second amendment under scrutiny the sandy hook primary school shooting that left twenty children and six staff dead so the president urging a ban on some firearms lottie's tom hartman looks at whether the new year might bring some change to america's weapons policy. my guess is what we're going to see

is cosmetic change we're going to see probably the or the assault weapons ban come back they'll be a fair number of loopholes in it but you know the u.s. is not going to end up going the way that's what's a longer israel have done or many most european countries have done australia when john howard was president one thousand nine hundred eight when there was a mass slaughter and then they said ok that's it we're going to buy back all the guns and it's not going to happen here there's just too much money being made with guns insane supreme court or at least five right wing crazies out of nine on the supreme court decided that even though the second amendment says in order to maintain a well regulated militia necessary for the for the security of a free state the right to you know you people have the right to own guns that's half of it the other half of it is that the supreme court also said that corporations interest groups lobbying groups billionaires can throw unlimited amounts of money at politicians. freedom of speech but not of the speak up we were pullets home the world's most wanted was in the sun's team out is to achieve whilst

on the house arrest and imply thing that's coming up in a few minutes. he survived the atrocities. to make a final decision. has changed his life and to the world around him. by giving. hope. to so many children.

the american worker. wars uprisings crises and worldwide protests may twenty twelve a turbulent you might have turned out differently well to expose the headlines that could have been. twenty twelve was certainly full of disappointing headlines hope fueled by the arab spring turned into the turmoil of the arab autumn the war in syria claimed countless lives and the fiscal crisis all

the european union torn apart at its very seams and the problems facing our world today certainly don't offer themselves up to an easy fix what if things had turned out differently what if opportunities were actually seized upon instead of missed well here's our look at the twenty twelve headlines that could have been. diplomacy succeeds in syria ending bloody conflict. instead this was the image of syria the world saw increasingly violent clashes between government forces and the opposition had claimed more than forty thousand lives efforts to negotiate a diplomatic solution fall flat as divisions ripped apart both the country and the international community hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled to neighboring states where many have found conditions to be dismal meanwhile syria's war is threatening to spill over its borders as tensions escalate within and in the region

. but told me to try and sanction slashed as iran's nuclear to accept. gunning to end game for the us rules to restrict fire on. mideast peace and israel league two state park has promised on. yet this was the reality israel's assault on palestinian militants in gaza israel's anti-missile shield repelled the most attacks on its territory but a strike claimed the lives of more than one hundred sixty palestinians many of them civilians despite harsh condemnation from many and then. national community the war and israel's subsequent decision to construct three thousand new settlements effectively slammed the door shut to any prospect of peace people power moment you step aside and let a democracy in. get lost get most notorious kuantan of my prison permanently shot. euro zone cuts the cuts and lifts austerity. but the news of austerity only

tightened as deep public sector cuts brought thousands of angry demonstrators to the streets of greece spain italy and portugal. the worst economic crisis of a generation has battered the european union's very foundations exacerbating tensions between member states with some regions now desperately wanting out more grew up in a europe that was divided from east to west going to europe that is divided from old to self never at any point of the history of this union has there been more discord of rank that we covered. corporate cash for the campaign coffers as part of the us political cleanup. no here for u.k. british quit the european union. we can expound a julie on the solyndra pointed un free speech and. instead a song remains a political refugee at ecuador's london embassy where he's been granted asylum he continues to fight extradition to sweden over alleged sex crimes charges that he

says are politically motivated and tied to his work in leaking international government secrets. the power of people speaking up and resisting together terrifies corrupt democratic power so much so that ordinary people here in the west and the enemy of governments an enemy to be watched and then emits a beacon for all to be impoverished true democracy is not the white house. true democracy is not. true democracy is the resistance of people with the truth against lies from top to right here in london everyday ordinary people teach us that democracy is free speech and dissent. from heretics to hero american whistleblower bradley manning finally free. droning on memo nations

agree to end iraq of remote controlled war. egypt's arab spring sees democracy defeated hardline islam is. the reality on the ground was anything but egyptian president mohamed morsi is foul like power grab unleashed fury and frenzied street battles and a fast track to constitutional overhaul referendum left a bitter opposition eager for change for them two thousand and twelve saw the arab spring transform into an egyptian nightmare had the revolution to get rid of a tyrant dictator. in order to that we made elections and the revolution and elections to choose someone to the present us turned out that this guy is also a tyrant himself and he has had lines may have been the stuff of imagination but that's the of twenty thirteen and all of them to life with the coffin of our team moscow syria has reportedly opened a new year with

a horrifying discovery of dozens of corpses in the capital damascus some of the bodies were to capitated traces of torture have not yet been identified he comes and widespread doubts they'll be any imminent breakthrough in syria's bloody civil standoff. very sad to say to everybody all over the world that the top geopolitical threat of two thousand and thirteen is going to be the top geopolitical tragedy of two thousand and eleven the rape of syria the only possibility it would be that the opposition. in a syrian way this sides not to listen to the saudis the turks their qataris the americans the brits and the french and they sit down with the assad government and they will work out a transitional government or at least a transitional period leading to free and fair elections is this going to happen not likely there's been no love lost between palestinians and israelis in the

aftermath of yet another war between the teams today television is planning new settlements in occupied palestinian land. going to rearm and defend themselves. their reports now on what birds for the future. if you look at what's happening on the ground israel continues to announce settlement construction and the palestinians continue to say that for as long as these announcements continue they will be no resumption of peace talks it wasn't so long ago that the palestinians were upgraded status at the united nations but you cannot detract from the fact that we still have palestinian faction groups hamas and fatah who always seem to be at each other's throats in less than a month the israelis will go to the polls and by all predictions they will reelect the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu for another term of office and it doesn't seem as if he has an olive branch so certainly the prognosis for any kind of peace moves is far back in two thousand and eight two thousand and nine we had a conflict that was twenty two days long by comparison this time around it was

eight days four years ago the casualty count was more than a thousand people who were killed most of them palestinians this time around the casualty count was was a lot lower and again four years ago there was a ground offensive this time around there wasn't a ground operation. in june twenty third team in iran they will be holding a presidential election who then they do a new job that will be running having served the maximum two terms but there is no certainty as to who will take over at a time when iran's nuclear ambitions continue to be a thorn in some western nations sides where journalists in return seek is often shared his insights with us doesn't think the new leader will bend to foreign will . i think we people of iran elect policy foreign policy terms things are going to be much the same terminology of western corporate media on this or a bizarre image of the islamic extremists in all sorts of different monikers the

point is iran is there to stay in terms of forging a very different type of developing nation economy because it has all that oil and all those resources and it's not going to suddenly start changing things the way the i.m.f. or the way washington wants it to be. or u.s. war on terror sometimes goes too far for british olympic hero is held by america's customs on suspicion he's a terrorist because he happened to be born in the wrong country. plus the latest bond movie skyfall goes into history reaching the staggering one billion dollars box office my first time in the franchise's history that earned more. free credit take three years for charges. to make me free is free. to you free. old

free broadcast quality video for your media projects free media r.t. dot com. in europe people are busy making new year wishes and plenty of them have their fingers crossed that things will be a little less tight in twenty thirteen when vestment advisor patrick young says greece still doesn't have a functioning government system that will be able to save the country from the deep recession it now faces. what's happened so far has been swimming cuts on the masses and we really haven't managed to make the remotest impact upon the whole nation itself greece is still fundamentally in a huge problematic situation it does not remotely have a functioning government system that fiscally is going to manage to organize itself in any which way possible to manage to get through the continuing swinge and cuts

that need to take place out of course then we're looking at the whole issue of the demonstrators are the governments listening well the truth is the governments can't afford to listen because what we're seeing within the european union even if the euro has survived miraculously for twelve months government has run out of money the european union's western socialist model of spending huge amounts of money borrowing even greater amounts of money and hoping to pay everything manyara or indeed thirty years from manion or simply does not work but only three years ago arland was bankrupt receiving a bailout to rescue its failed economy but a spike this the very same country has just assumed the six month presidency of the european council was artie's there are smith reports the celtic tiger has some hard graft ahead of it. it's all change for the e.u. presidency as takes over the six months rotating challenge on the first of january

not the ovi choice islands one of the pegs the countries that have been least stable economies in europe and sure enough the first country to take hold in the presidency of the twenty seven nation bloc while being propped up by i.m.f. money so for the next six months the e.u. and systemic problems will be presided over by one of its weakest and most problematic members so what specific challenges faced in europe over the six months of its presidency. the european economy is slowing and the crisis is nowhere near. secondly it must preside over leaders actually agreeing to an e.u. budget for the year two thousand and fourteen to two thousand and twenty something that spectacularly failed to do so and thirdly there's a problem coming from right here in london increasing british opposition to

brussels and the threat to european cohesion that uses the irish government expects the e.u. presidency to coast in excess of seventy million euros money the country can ill afford and what will it be spent twenty four million on catering accommodation and transport for example and another twenty million extra government. spends a year in the twenty twelve on the house arrest and the other holed up in the ecuadorian embassy in london but he still managed to produce a t.v. series talking to the. mainstream media correspondent in the us has been following his ups and downs throughout the year. a lot of you say we did more in a year old media organizations have done decades we've really had a front seat view of everything that's been going on we had him at the beginning of

the year it's addition to sweden we saw his the pill rejected we then saw that dramatic twist in the trial when he went into the i could do it embassy seeking asylum we. certainly the british media we see a lot of them turned on him quite viciously especially during the course of this year with these huge events happening surrounding. a lot of people who would put that down payment simply to jealousy. what twenty twelve saw something of a rise of the machines as drone warfare shot into the headlines american unmanned craft killing civilians abroad and the approval of drug use for keeping tabs on people inside the u.s. those are the topics that drew far from having martin. breaking the set she believes things will get worse in twenty thirty. really when we're talking about drones actually a really serious topic because people are under this notion that drones are somehow precise they're the good way to fight the war on terror but really they completely

are counterintuitive they create in the harbor more terrorists they have a ninety eight percent failure rate surveillance drones are going to have been in this country in two thousand and thirteen congress passed a bill to now authorize surveillance drones all over the united states so this is just not going to stop it's going to get worse aside from from the deaths and the double tap drones that we have in the middle eastern countries now is going to create a chilling effect where people aren't going to want to dissent as much and that's the real problem with the online privacy the online erosion of our civil liberties as well as people are going to speak out as much if they feel like they're being watched. in brazil the hostages taken in a botched robbery have been risky or seize a group to use it seems to rope a jewelry factory in the poor of the town in the south of the country where the main school crowd celebrated the announcement that the hostages had been freed the man thought to be the head of the gang was also killed in a shootout with police. not to nations has imposed an arms

embargo on the twenty three rebels in attempts to quell fighting in the democratic republic of congo the group took control of the city of goma last month before being forced to withdraw on the international pressure neighboring countries were wondering uganda have been accused by the un no backing the rebels. tens of thousands of people have marched for greater democracy and the resignation of hong kong's top political leader long term being faced falling popularity and no confidence vote against him since he came to power six months ago he was elected by beijing that committee of one thousand people. but a few minutes time we meet turned off the docks priests who built a whole village for his adopted children all seventy of them as of the breaker knotting.